


too young to give into forever.

by brokenheartsclub



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: "Enemies" to Lovers., "enemies" they're in love & bad at communication, Alternate Universe - College/University, Artistic Gay & Computer Nerd Gay., Canon Trans Character, Depression, Dumb boys falling in love!, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Recovery, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-03-13 20:08:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18947941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenheartsclub/pseuds/brokenheartsclub
Summary: “Matteo Florenzi, have you selected a partner?” Mr. McKinnon’s voice slices through the thick air of Matteo’s thoughts and he’s brought back to the surface of reality. He hazily blinks for a few seconds before shaking his head, ending it with a shrug to show his carelessness of it all. Mr. McKinnon simply sighs before he gestures over towards a boy in the front row and lifts his hand to point at Matteo. Matteo felts like the point is meant to fracture him; to split him apart until he’s nothing, left for strangers to pick apart like a project.“David, there’s your partner. I’m sure you two will get alongfantastically.”__Matteo and David are assigned as partners for a final project under the topic of "Life". Except there are two problems that Matteo has with this:One. Matteo hasn't paid attention in the class at all and is purely using it for a G.P.A. booster.Two. David Schriebner, in all of his 5'6 glory, cannot stand Matteo.





	1. white noise in my mind.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this basically in one sitting so it's unbeta'd, a wreck, but it's my baby. (we love the beginning of a manic episode).  
> i. the title is from LOST BOY by troye sivan.  
> ii. yes, i'm gay. yes, i love being overly descriptive and i'm in love with metaphors. get over it.  
> iii. i personally have bipolar disorder but i try to channel the feelings of my depressive episodes into matteo's but if it comes off a bit differently, my apologies!  
> iv. kudos & comments are always much appreciated.  
> v. you can find me on tumblr at @transmatteo

Matteo stands in the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his torso as he stares into the fogged-over glass of the mirror. His chest rises and falls as he tries the challenge his therapist gave him.

_“Look in the mirror, Matteo.”_

He reaches forward with a shaking hand and smudges the fog away, letting his blurred image appear through the condensation, image distorted by the droplets of water still present on the mirror. He sighs shakily as he lowers his towel to rest against his hips, low enough to show the perfect curve of his spine, the dimples of Venus that rest just before the tailbone. He closes his eyes shut and his fingers tighten around the ball of a towel in his hands. He grips it as if it’s his life-line and if he lets go, he’s free-falling.

_“And say out loud all the perfectly human things about yourself.”_

He opens his eyes to see that most of the condensation has wiped away and all he has left is the reflection that stares back at him, vacant and cold. He watches as his chest rises, holds for a few moments, then sinks back in and his shoulders fall forward as if he’s trying to curl in on itself. As if he’s so ashamed by what the mirror has to say, he needs to shield himself from the fatal wounds it can inflict on him.

“My hair.” His free hand reaches up to run through his hair and he pulls it away, letting the strands of his hair flop against his forehead, twisted and frizzed out. “It’s weird and doesn’t cooperate but it’s me. It’s me.” His hand slides down his face and it settles on the soft curve of his jaw and his pinky runs over his bitten-red lips, chapped and bloody from constantly gnawing on them.

“My acne. It’s better than it used to be but it’s still human. That’s good. It means I’m young.” He begins picking at a piece of skin on his lip before dropping his hand, pulling the tab of skin with him. He winces as it tears a bit more than expected, blood beginning to pool already. He swipes his tongue along the metallic red, pulling his lips between his teeth before letting it go. The mirror has completely cleared up by this point and Matteo can’t help but to feel that his own reflection is far too tired of seeing him. With a flick of the lights off, he pulls his clothes over his body and he tries not to focus on it. He tries to remind himself that recovery is nothing but a roller coaster and that he won't always be on his way up but, the disappointment builds a wall around his heart and sinks itself deep inside.

He tries to ignore the snarl of the negativity in his mind that occurs as he pulls his thin t-shirt over his body, letting it hang to mid-thigh. He pulls his sweater over his head as well and the snarl quiets down once he’s wrapped in the warmth of his oversized grandpa sweater. He picks his cellphone off of the counter-top and stares down at the unread texts.

ONE UNREAD TEXT FROM:  
**MAMA**.  
“Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old, they will not turn from it.” — Proverbs 22:6.  
My dear son, you are my pride and joy and you make me so proud of you every single day. I miss you. Let’s have dinner sometime soon. <3 Mom.

ONE UNREAD TEXT FROM:  
**JONAS.**  
Party tonight? I’m at Hanna’s rn

  
Matteo replies to Jonas’ text with a simple thumbs up emoji and leaves his mother’s on read before making his way to his bedroom and flopping down in his bed, face first. He had only gotten up to make himself some breakfast and shower and yet, he’s just as exhausted as he was when he woke up, if not more.

He grabs his pillow and pulls it beneath his chest, curling his body around it as he rests his head on it. The pillow sighs quietly along with him and pulls him back into a slumber, letting the ring of his phone fall on silent ears.

 

* * *

 

Matteo decides he hates Jonas.

The party they’re currently at is overflowing with the amount of contact, strangers grinding up against one another and reaching out for their mistake of the night. He abandoned his sweater in Hanna’s car at the sight of the multiple people in the building and he didn’t want people to touch his sweater; it was his comfort, not anyone else’s. His mind screamed at him as he pulled the sweater off but he had ignored it as he slipped into the party.

Forty-five minutes had passed and a strange girl’s hands settle on his hips and she pulls him closer, her breath heavy against Matteo’s throat and suddenly, it all burns. The girl’s hair is pulled from her face and she pulls away from Matteo to stare at her lips and he stays still as her freckles become indistinguishable and he’s struggling to see clearly. The bubble of five other drinks threatens to spill out along with the tears of his building panic. He pulls his arm from around her neck and picks up his bottle of beer and tries to settle the raging fire beginning in the pit of his stomach. The scent of damp skin and hard liquor burns at his nostrils and he knows he needs _out_.

He slips through the crowd with his barely touched bottle of beer in hand, shoving past Abdi and Carlos who try to call out for them. He hears them but the sound of his pulsing blood drowns them out and he knows he’s too drunk for all of this. He’s too drunk to be running from the party on his own, he’s too drunk to be ignoring his friends trying to help him, he’s too drunk—

The fresh air nips at his skin but it doesn’t matter—the burning of his thoughts blaze through any attempts of giving into the cold. He makes his way down the steps of the porch, ignoring the cloud of smoke that hangs over them. He wants to breathe it all in and lose himself in it but not here. Not with the strangers who can see the tears building up in his eyes and can hear his heartbeat thrumming against the empty cage of his ribs. He can feel their eyes burning into the flesh of his exposed skin and he can feel their words crawling on his skin.

_“That’s Matteo, he gets like that sometimes—”_

_“Isn’t that the computers kid who failed? I heard Mr. Nguyen yelling at him once.”_

_“He’s always with Jonas. Do you think he’s—?”_  
  
He stops running. He takes a moment to gain his breath back and collapses against the railing next to him and looks around. He’s nowhere near the party and if memory serves him correctly, he’s about a twenty-minute drive away from the place. His lungs feel as if they’re on fire and tears threaten to spill. He raises trembling hands to his eyes and aggressively wipes away the tears, turning to face the water below.

The water is calming; Matteo imagines that the fears building up in his chest slips away with the current of the river, When he inhales for the first time the entire night, he lets his eyes fall shut and the sound of the water take him away. It crashes against the rocks and it feels it in his chest—his heart is just as jagged and worn as the rocks are and when he opens his eyes, the sorrow seeps deep within again.

There’s a boy.

He climbs down the slippery slope of rocks before settling on one just above the water line. Matteo watches as the boy slips off his shoes and socks slowly and sinks his feet beneath the water, leaning back with it settles at mid-calf. Matteo’s face flashes with horror at the sight of the skin-tight jeans being soaked but is caught off-guard when he sees the way the boy sprawls out against the rocks. His arms are bent slightly as they stretch out beside him in a way that reminds Matteo of angel wings. He watches the boy reach up and pull off the beanie sitting on his head and his face expression shifts in a way that Matteo can only assume is discomfort. Matteo inhales sharply except this time it’s not out of fear—it’s out of pure interest.

The boy sits up after a few moments and reaches for his bag that Matteo hadn’t noticed. It was tossed up a few feet above the boy’s head and Matteo leans over the edge more, hoping to see what he was digging around for. He watches as the boy pulls out something slim and dark before flipping it open and he concludes that it’s a sketchbook. Time slips away from Matteo as he sinks against the railing, resting his head on his hands and just watching the boy in the water.

He watches the boy kick his feet and giggle as the water splashes up, a few droplets hitting him in the face. He watches as the boy puts away his book and pulls out his phone and settles back on the rocks, sprawled out once again as he listens to music. He watches as the boy picks up what he assumes is a rock and throws it as hard as he can, laying back down once the loud splash settles back into mere water running away. He watches because, for some reason, he can’t stop. The boy pulls a camera out of his bag and Matteo lets his eyes slip shut, his shoulders relaxing for the first time since he left his house. The stirring of the water below, the way the moonlight beams against the water, and the cool air wrapping Matteo like a snug blanket make him feel serene.

He opens his eyes and is greeted with the sight of nothing but water and rocks. Disappointment sinks his heart into the pit of his stomach and he’s not entirely sure why—maybe it’s because his entertainment of the night slipped away into the cracks of the rocks and Matteo is left alone once again. He sighs bitterly as he stares at the spot once occupied. After a few moments of wishing for time to turn back just so he can see the boy again, Matteo pulls out his phone and winces at the number of messages he had.

12 missed calls from: Jonas.  
5 missed calls from: Carlos.  
6 missed calls from: Abdi.  
2 missed calls from: Doctor Gossicar.

15 unread messages in: ok.cool.  
6 unread messages from: Jonas.

Matteo curses to himself silently, hitting the call button just below Jonas’ name as he begins to venture down to the road to the path that leads to the water below. The phone rings twice before Jonas picks up, his voice laced with both worry and feigned annoyance.

“ _Where are you?_ ”

Matteo looks around for a sign that tells him exactly where he is but he can’t find anything. He carefully steps down the rocks as he hears Jonas cover the speaker and talk to someone behind him before turning back to the phone and repeating the question again. Matteo stays silent as he settles on a rock a few feet above where the boy had laid before replying to Jonas.

“The bridge just before the gas station to get to the campsite.” The campsite was a good place for them all; every year, they tried to go camping and often failed but it was them. The chaos of piling all four boys into a single car, the serenity of slumping against one another around a fire, and curling into each other for a night. Matteo adores it for the simple fact that he’s allowed to be him and that’s the only time he really can—when he’s with the boys and only them.

“ _Matteo, that’s like… An hour walk away._ ” Matteo can hear the concern from Jonas’ voice and it slips through the speaker of his phone and coils around his throat, suffocating him. He clenches his eyes shut and pulls the phone away from his ear for a moment to gather his thoughts. He draws in a deep breath before bringing the phone back to his ear and sighing. Jonas had paused as if he knew that Matteo pulled the phone away. “I’m going to come to pick you up. Don’t move.”

“You were drinking.”

“ _Hanna wasn’t. I’m not leaving you out there, Luigi. It’s ten degrees out and you don’t have a jacket.”_ Matteo glances down and for the first time since he left, he realizes that he’s freezing. The hair on his arms stand up and goosebumps have formed and he’s visibly shivering. After resting his phone against his shoulder, Matteo slides his arms around himself and curls his fists in the thin fabric of his t-shirt, cursing himself for not grabbing his jacket on the way out of the flat. Jonas hangs up the call and Matteo puts his phone into his pocket before wrapping his arms back around himself. He rests his chin in the bend of his elbow and scans his eyes over the rocks again.

He swears he can sense the boy still nearby. His eyes rake over the rocks before his eyes land on a piece of cloth that’s so dark that if it wasn’t for the streetlights nearby, he wouldn’t have caught it. He reaches forward and picks it off the rock and it’s the beanie that the boy had been wearing earlier and Matteo lets out a shaky breath he was aware he had been holding in. He fumbles with the beanie, running his fingertips over the seams. It’s a dark blue and there’s a brown tag at the tip of it that Matteo slides his index finger into before curling it and letting it tighten, He snorts silently to himself at the idea that comes to mind as he slips the finger out and flips the beanie inside out. There’s a tag on the inside and Matteo wonders how the boy hasn’t ripped it out yet. He holds it between his hands and studies it as if it’ll tell him all the secrets of the world.

As if it’ll lead him to the boy who was in the water.

“Matteo!” Matteo nearly drops the beanie as he jumps, eyes flicking up to the bridge. Jonas is standing there with Hanna, hands curled around a dim flashlight that _tries_ to beam in Matteo’s direction. He narrows his eyes as he finally registers how dark and cold it is and his hands tighten around the beanie. He gulps, the suffocating feeling curling around his throat once more, and he simply just stares. Jonas calls his name once again and he gets dragged back into the harsh reality, sputtering and cold.

“I’m coming!” He pulls himself off the rocks and holds the beanie close to his chest, stumbling on his way up. He nearly slips near the top and stumbles forward, hands landing on the jagged rocks, the beanie cushioning one while the other scrapes against the rocks a little too hard. The boy must really be a figment of his imagination, he declares silently, as he pulls himself up to the top and makes his way towards his friends.

Jonas meets him half-way and takes Matteo’s hands into his own, scanning them for scratch marks. His left one—the one with the beanie—is fine, but blood trickles down the right one. Jonas just sighs quietly before dropping Matteo’s hands and pulling Matteo into a hug and the boy can’t help but to immediately melt into it. Jonas is the serenity in all of the chaos, the protector of the prey, the reason that Matteo was still functioning, even if it was only a little bit. He breathes in the warm, bitter liquor aroma of his best friend, fist still tight around the beanie.

It reminds him that he’s not alone and that he doesn’t really hate Jonas.

“Let’s go home, yeah?” Matteo nods after a few moments and he gives Hanna a soft grimace, hoping she forgives him for making her drive all the way out here. And the smile she gives back says that she’s willing to drive to the ends of the Earth for him.

 

* * *

 

 

When Matteo wakes up the next morning, there’s a dull ache thrumming against his skull. He stretches and groans loudly, the cracking of his back echoing throughout his bedroom making him wince with disgust. The sunlight bleeds through the sliver of his closed curtains and Matteo stares at it as he flops back down into the bed.

It stretches across his cluttered floor, ending just before the closed door. Matteo’s eyes trail along with it, eyes diverting only at the end to stare at the closed door. He raises his hands to his eyes and rubs at them until the room blurs into a single swirl. Jonas bursts through the door with a loud clattering before he collapses on the bed next to Matteo, burying his face into Matteo’s pillow.

Matteo reaches over and runs a hand through his friend’s curly hair, letting his fingers rest on Jonas’ scalp before he pulls them away and rests his hand on his chest, staring up at the ceiling. Tension had risen between Jonas and Matteo when they graduated high school and moved in together, although neither one could put a name to as to why. They knew every inch of each other and they spent so long existing as one that when they grew from Jonas&Matteo to Jonas and Matteo, they both knew adulthood had come. Matteo worried that living together would destroy their fundamentally solid friendship and for the first few months, it appeared that way.

Jonas had stumbled into his room one day after Matteo had experienced another mood drop and Matteo wasn’t sure if it was the fear of losing his best friend or the alcohol, but Jonas had burst into tears. He collapsed in Matteo’s arms and begged for Matteo to stay. And Matteo had buried his hands in his best friend’s hair and whispered the most sincere promise he could ever: “I’m not going anywhere.”

Ever since Matteo had made it his personal mission to convey his love for Jonas through subtle gestures. He doesn’t want his best friend to ever feel as if Matteo is leaving him again.

“I’m so tired,” Jonas mumbles in the pillow. Matteo turns onto his side and tucks his hands beneath his cheek, wrinkling his nose at his friend. The stench of stale weed and beer is heavy on Jonas’ clothes but Matteo knows he smells just the same.

“You have your own bed,” Matteo says. “Go sleep there.” He reaches forward and shoves Jonas lightly enough to rattle the boy but not hard enough to cause him to physically fall off the bed. Jonas turns his head to show Matteo the scowl he has plastered on his face but it doesn’t last long before they both burst out into quiet laughter. Matteo cuts himself off with a groan and raises his hand to his forehead, the pain spiking.

“Hangover?”

Matteo shrugs and sits up, stretching once again. He slumps forward and drops his arms to rest in front of him, head turning back to look at Jonas.

“Why did you go to the bridge yesterday?” Matteo knew the question was coming. He could sense it from the moment that Jonas walked into the room, stance loaded in the defensive boy-ish yet protective way that embodies Jonas. Matteo shrugs again and pulls his gaze away from Jonas to avoid the answer but when Jonas rests his hand on Matteo’s shoulder, he knows there's no escaping the question.

“I just ran until I couldn’t.” Jonas hums as if he understands but they both know he doesn’t and that’s okay. Jonas sits up properly and slumps next to Matteo, the sagging in his shoulders a clear sign of his hangover. He squints even in the darkness of the bedroom, and he’s leaning against Matteo for support. Matteo wants to make fun of his best friend but thinks back on all the times Jonas had to hold him up and decides not to.

“But the bridge.”

“The water was nice.” Matteo looks down at his hands and the small gashes on his hand transport him back to last night as he rubs the pad of his thumb over them repeatedly as if the moment he stopped, he’d forget it all. “And there was this boy. He was just—”

Jonas laughs, the feeling loud and comforting against Matteo’s shoulder. It shakes both of them gently and Matteo nudges Jonas in the side, rolling his eyes.

“So it really is gay culture to fall in love with someone in half a second.” Matteo scoffs at the absurdity but the blush that grows on his cheeks gives him away. It’s not that Matteo fell in love with the boy, but he became enamoured. It was late—well past midnight if the texts he got from ok.cool. was anything to go by—and this strange boy dipped into the river with jeans as if was nothing. And if Matteo had the chance to turn the clock back to meet the boy again, he would.

“Are you telling me that you’re not in love with Hozier?” Jonas has no audible reply but in turn, elbows Matteo in the side. Matteo groans loudly and collapses on his side, holding the opposite with both of his hands to feign pain. Jonas just reaches forward and ruffles Matteo’s head before slipping out of the bed and rocking onto the tips of his toes to stretch upwards.

“When do you see her next?” Matteo clenches his jaw momentarily before he shrugs, his eyes flickering over to his phone that was abandoned on his dresser, dead. He thinks about the last time he saw his therapist. It had been two weeks ago and he had sprinted out in the middle of the meeting when she started bringing up his father.

_“You’re allowed to miss him, Matteo. He’s your father.”_

Matteo has been avoiding her calls and messages ever since.

“Okay, I’m ordering pizza and the boys are coming over before class. You going today?” Matteo drops his hands from his sides and shrugs, pursing his lips as he considers the options. He knows he should; he’s rarely been in attendance for this class but he needs it to elevate his G.P.A. Hell, he doesn’t even know what it’s called. Jonas gives him the look that he has perfected over the course of their first year at college; Matteo likes to call it the “ _I’m-your-mother-because-you-never-answer-yours_ ” look and it’s mostly used when Matteo tries to get out things he doesn’t want to do but should, such as class. He shrugs again, shrinking beneath Jonas’ gaze.

“Yeah, probably.” Jonas gives him a positive smile in turn before leaving Matteo’s room, closing the door behind him. Matteo listens to the sound of Jonas’ footsteps fading until there’s nothing left except him and the sound of his heartbeat against his eardrums. He runs his hands over his soft blankets to soothe himself before his eyes land on the beanie sitting on the edge of his bed. He reaches forward and gently holds it in both hands before pulling it to his chest and falling back onto his bed.

He lifts it to hover above his face before letting his arms fall to his side and lets go of the beanie, letting it tumble to the floor. He tilts his chin up slightly and closes his eyes, the constant exhaustion pulling on his body and the headache still throbbing mindlessly. Sleep tugs on his body, begging for another taste, but he knows he can’t give in.

With that, he decides to get up and get ready for the day.

 

* * *

  
When Matteo finally leaves his apartment, he’s already twenty minutes late for his class. With the additional time that it takes for him to walk across the street and through the campus, buy a coffee and a small snack, he knows he’s going to be about forty-five minutes late. Jonas gives him a knowing side-eye when he slips out of the shared apartment with a now-cold piece of pizza and Matteo just flips him off in a reply to the silent comment that’s hanging in the room.

‘ _You’re late. Again._ ’

He picks and pulls at the pizza, tossing the crust into the garbage bin just outside the apartment, before making his way towards the campus.

Starting college had both the best and the worst decision of his life. There was this quiet expectation that the fast pace of university would pull him out of his lull but rather, it made it worse. He’s been stuck in this push and pull of trying to live his life while being pulled down by his constantly swirling mental state and he’s barely able to keep a grasp on either one. He swears that as long as he’s able to disguise it beneath poorly made jokes and too-loud-laughter, he’ll be okay.

He thanks the cashier at the coffee shoppe when she gave him what she designated as the usual; too-sugary chocolate frappucino with a small egg sandwich. He wasn’t really partial to either but the cashier had recommended them the first time he went to the cafe and ever since, he stuck with it.

Dark rainclouds loom outside when Matteo leaves the cafe and the storm stirs just the same inside his chest. He doesn’t feel happy but he’s not quite sad either. Everything around him feels as if it’s in fast-motion and he’s not quite moving as fast as the rest of them. He snaps out of it when he arrives at his classroom door.

He opens the door and tries to slip in quietly, sipping on his frappucino as he moves across the walls of the auditorium. Just as the class falls silent, his drink slurps and he freezes in his spot, suddenly wishing for the ground to swallow him whole. People turn to stare at him with lazy gazes, a combination of being happy he interrupted and being annoyed he interrupted.

“Mister Florenzi, how nice of you to join us.” The teacher, Mr. McKinnon, flicks up his wrist and stares at his watch before turning the piercing gaze to Matteo. Matteo feels as if the ground is about to swallow him whole and spit him back out at the feet of his teacher, drenched and shuddering. “Forty-seven minutes and twenty-three seconds late. You are aware this class starts at three in the afternoon, correct?”

Matteo nods and he lowers his drink to his side as he pins himself against a wall, a blush forming on his cheeks and stretching down his neck, beneath the collar of his over-sized sweatshirt. The relationship that Matteo has with this particular teacher is complex; they have enough of an understanding on the basis of Matteo being incapable of being completely attached to reality but it’s harder for Mr. McKinnon to grasp onto straws when Matteo keeps shaving them all down. Mr. McKinnon simply makes a noise before gesturing towards the mass of empty chairs, commanding Matteo to sit down. He collapses down in the closest seat, sinking down until his shoulders are the same height as his the low-rise seat. He bends his knees awkwardly and they fan out across the aisle, one foot slipping in the space between the seat in front of him and its mini-wall, and the one resting against the leg of his desk. The deep lull of the teacher’s voice bounces off the wall and it surrounds Matteo the same way that the storm clouds crowd around the roof of the building.

The rest of the class blurs by and Matteo spends it absently staring at the wall and tapping his pencil against the edge of the desk. He turns and begins to analyze every student in the hall with him, trying to put a name to every face, a colour to every smile, a world to every pair of eyes. He lets his imagination whisk him away as he tries to put something all fifty people who mean nothing to him.

“Matteo Florenzi, have you selected a partner?” Mr. McKinnon’s voice slices through the thick air of Matteo’s thoughts and he’s brought back to the surface of reality. He hazily blinks for a few seconds before shaking his head, ending it with a shrug to show his carelessness of it all. Mr. McKinnon simply sighs before he gestures over towards a boy in the front row and lifts his hand to point at Matteo. Matteo felts like the point is meant to fracture him; to split him apart until he’s nothing, left for strangers to pick apart like a project. He rubs his thumb across the injury from yesterday as if the repeated motion is meant to soothe him. It hurts instead.

“David, there’s your partner. I’m sure you two will get along _fantastically_.” The last word drips on the tip of his tongue and Matteo knows it’s daunting. It’s a mockery of the fact that when Matteo and David make eye contact, they know exactly why the teacher drawls like that. 

They aren’t known to get along. 


	2. i can be the subject of your dreams;

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dr. Gossicar stays silent to encourage Matteo to continue. He tightens his grip around the tiger, blunt nails digging into the soft fur. He wonders if, despite how bitten down his nails are, they could tear away at the fur. He could pull it apart and let the soft fluff fall to the floor, ruined by his own hands.
> 
> He tends to ruin things.
> 
> “I did something bad in high school and it’s coming back. “ He pulls at the tiger’s tail before letting it lax. His breathing is tight once again as he struggles to let the words slip through, afraid of demonizing himself. What if this tarnished her opinion of him? “I had a friend and we were both closeted and I outed them to protect myself.”
> 
> “Did they know you were gay, too?” Matteo nods, the lump in his throat overtaking for a moment. He visibly gulps and shies away from her, eyes falling to focus on the tiger’s. They’re far too big for its face, the pupils swallowing him whole. A thin ring of sparkling baby blue outlines the pupils and Matteo swirls along with them, feeling like he’s being watched. “Well, tell me more about what happened.”
> 
> \----  
> an insight into matteo's world of recovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was a bitch to write for the simple fact that adulthood and depression are not kind. but alas! here it is, in all its glory. with the same concept as chapter one: it's a trash baby but it's my trash baby! all mistakes are my own because this hasn't been properly edited or beta'd. 
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS!:  
> as i'd never want to trigger anyone or send them into a depressive spiral, here are some things touched in this chapter: depressive spirals -- it's consistent and present; public forced outing; stopping of medication; minor form of self-punishment. (i.e. "i dont deserve this".)
> 
> without further ado, here y'all go. leave some kudos/comments if you enjoyed because it's truly free serotonin.

“Okay, but consider this: you ask her if she wants to go out for lunch for sausages,” Carlos says. He’s turned towards Abdi, hands folded over his chest as he leans back on the couch. They’re discussing something about this girl that Abdi likes but Matteo isn’t sure exactly what Carlos is _trying_ to say. Jonas just chuckles and rolls his eyes at the comment and Matteo sinks even further into the couch, rubbing his hands over his face. He suddenly becomes far more interested in his phone than his friends. He turns on his phone and simply stares at the lock screen; it’s a photo of the four of them, crammed into the perfect lock screen-sized image.

Matteo is leaning against Jonas with his tongue between his teeth, eyes crinkled. Jonas has one arm around Matteo and another reaching upwards to flick Abdi, his head tilted slightly upwards to look at the two boys who were hovering above him. Abdi and Carlos were both sitting on top of the table while Matteo and Jonas were sitting on the bench and they took this opportunity to make the most grotesque faces they could possibly muster up. The sun is setting in the distance and you can see bottles in all of their hands but the happiness that’s clear in their faces isn’t man-made. For once in all of their lives, in that particular moment, they were all truly happy.

“Luigi.” A hand settles on his shoulder and jolts him gently, bringing him out of the daze he was in. Matteo blinks hazily as he turns his head to look at Jonas but he can’t bring himself to actually _look_ at Jonas. He feels exhausted; his knees are folded up to his chest and his shoulders are curled inwards. He feels as if all of his sorrow is about to burst through his chest and he’s preparing to catch it in his lap to avoid letting the other boys know.

“Have you been smoking?” Abdi asks and the other three turn to Matteo with a look of genuine concern and curiosity. Matteo shakes his head as he begins to fiddle with his phone again.

On. Off. On. Off. On. Off.

He sees the boys on his lock screen blink quicker than the ones in front of him do and it feels like he’s being watched. His skin crawls at their gaze and it pierces through him, twisting through his blood until he shivers under the stares.

“No, I-. No.” He hasn’t been smoking. The hand on his shoulder squeezes gently and Matteo raises a hand to cover Jonas’ for a fleeting moment before dropping his back into his own lap, hands curling around his phone once again.  Abdi’s stare stays on Matteo for a little too long but his gaze doesn’t feel as menacing or as laced with concern as Jonas’ or Carlos’; it feels as if he’s trying to tell Matteo that he loves him without saying the words.

Matteo’s phone flashes in his hands and it draws the attention back onto him as he picks up his phone, eyes narrowed in confusion. He puts the bottle in his other hand down onto the table, his grip tightening briefly before he relaxes once again.

“Luigi, are you cheating on us?” Carlos asks with feigned hurt, his hand lifting to his chest as he dramatically attempts to flick his hair out of his face. Abdi just lets out a stifled groan as he punches Carlos’ shoulder and Jonas drops his face into his hand, peeking through his fingers just to look towards Matteo.

 

ONE UNREAD TEXT FROM:

**[UNKNOWN NUMBER]**

On Thursday, I’ll be at Fauna’s Shoppe. Be there at 20:00.

-David Schreibner.

 

“Who is it?” Matteo looks up and shrugs, tossing his phone to the side and wrapping his arms around himself. He doesn’t bother replying to David’s text message and just leaves it at that; why should he give a boy who doesn’t want anything to do with him the time of day? When he looks up, he knows he’s not getting out of the question. Curse his friends and their eager need to know every inch of Matteo’s life to the point where they knew Matteo better than he knew himself.

“David.”

“The art one?” Abdi just sounds more confused by the answer than the fact Matteo had gotten a random text. Matteo nods and runs a hand through his hair as he adjusts himself to be more comfortable. He turns to lay partially on the couch; his back against the arm of the chair and his knees folded slightly. His toes just reach Jonas’ thighs and he gives them a nudge that’s meant to be annoying and in turn, Jonas lightly slaps his feet. And it works because now he’s facing Abdi and Carlos and there’s less movement to look at them.

“Yeah. We’re partners in the art class I’m in and he hates me so it’s awkward.” Jonas shakes his head and uses his thigh to nudge Matteo’s feet as he raises an arm to sling across the back of the couch. Carlos opens his mouth before clamping it back shut again and Abdi just looks just as confused, if not more.

His phone buzzes again.

TWO UNREAD TEXTS FROM:

**DAVID(+1)**

It’s not very smart of you to leave your number written on your desk. I erased it for you.

 

For the first time that day, a small smile cracks onto Matteo’s face. His chest blooms with an unregistered emotion at the thought that David took the time to erase Matteo’s number off the table. Or hell, even took a moment to look. Matteo had panicked after the teacher told them all to break and discuss things with their partner, so he wrote his number on his desk and fled before David could make his way to the desk. He stares at his phone and purses his lips ever so slightly to try to conjure up a response.

Then he realizes he can’t send a reply the same way he would to Jonas, or to Carlos, or to Abdi. David doesn’t like him; he can’t bear himself like that. He can’t come off too friendly or else David will find him annoying, but if he’s too mean, David will just ask the teacher for a new partner and he’ll fail the class. Matteo groans before the perfect reply comes to mind.

Send to:

**DAVID**

You found it, yeah?

 

Matteo shakes his head before sending the text, tossing his phone back towards Jonas’ before shoving his face into his arm. He mumbles quietly, cursing himself for being stupid enough to do that. What if David hadn’t checked his desk? Why did he give David a way to contact him?

“Luigi!” Matteo snaps his head upwards as he looks at Jonas with a blank expression, his cheeks dusted with a pale rose shade. The ghost of the fleeting smile haunts his lips and he can feel Jonas’ eyes trained on them as if he was wondering if he had imagined it all. “You okay?”

Matteo sighs quietly before gesturing to his phone again, hoping that it conveys what he’s attempting to say. He can’t find the energy to move his lips to form around David’s name, knowing it’ll burn his mouth the second time around. He wonders if David’s name is laced with poison and every time he utters it, the poison seeps deeper.

“David?” Matteo nods. “Matteo, why don’t you just reply to his text instead of hitting Jonas with your phone every time he texts you?” Carlos, for once, has something intelligent to contribute to the conversation. Matteo wants to stick his tongue out in reply as a mockery to the fact that the one time Matteo needs him to be stupid, he’s not. But he doesn’t. And Carlos just stares at him, expectant of a reply.

“He hates me.”

“Do you know that for sure?” Matteo picks his head up and as soon as he feels all their gaze back on him again, he drops his head against the back cushion and just shrugs. Words feel heavy against his tongue and the more that they stare at him, the more and more and more he becomes aware of his body and the weight begins to sink inwards. With the simple admission of a text from a boy that none of them have spoken to in years, maybe even ever, he’s crumbling into himself.

“I did something bad when we were in high school and he still hates me for it.” Matteo looks down and begins to pull at a loose thread from his sweats. It bunches the fabric together as he tugs on it more and more, wrapping it around his fingers. He lets it tighten around his finger until the tip of his finger turns a dark red and then he works on unwinding it. He doesn’t bother looking back up to see their gaze because he knows. He knows that they know _exactly_ what he’s talking about.

“The thing with—”

Matteo nods, cutting off Abdi. He knows; his skin crawls at the thought of it and he wants to spill his insides onto the floor as an apology. He wants to crawl through the very fabric of time and stop himself from ever speaking to anyone from that high school. He can hear Jonas’ disappointed sigh and he’s suddenly brought back to the moment he came out to Jonas.

He can feel the bite of the cool winter air against his cheeks, stretching down the collar of his coat and grazing his throat, burning the warm skin. His fingers dug into the sweat materials of his thighs then as they do now and he exhales sharply, ears beginning to ring.

“ _You fucked up, Matteo. I know you’re gay too, but you fucked up. You really need to fix this mess.”_

Fucked up.

You fucked up, Matteo.

His breath feels shallow as if no matter how much he gasps, there’s nothing coming in. His lungs are emptying like a pool with a leak—sure to burst soon. Jonas’ hand moves from his own thigh to rest of Matteo’s knee, moving it slightly to hit the cushion of the couch and then Matteo’s other knee in a repeated motion. The contact draws Matteo back into the room, back into the conversation, and back into his own head. The ringing in his ears begin to subside and he glances up at Jonas, eyes welled up with shame before he looks over at Carlos and Abdi.

They know. It’s written clearly on their faces and although Matteo never told them himself, he assumes that they know because rumoured words spread faster than a fire ablaze in a library. Despite the fact that Jonas would never spill Matteo’s secrets, he’s never been good for hiding things from his best friends. The way they look at him now—tilted heads with confused expressions—is the same way they looked when he told him he was gay. They stare at him the same way for a few moments before snapping out of it like a trance, shaking their heads and melting back into couches with sympathetic grimaces. If Matteo had the energy, he’d point out how they move like synchronized dolls. If you pull one, the other follows shortly or even at the same.

He doesn’t.

“Maybe you should just ask him.” Matteo wrinkles his nose at the thought.

“No. He hates—”

“It’s been five years.” The tone that Carlos is using is exasperated. A hint of annoyance flashes across his features before he looks directly at Matteo and Matteo is suddenly preparing his defences, ready to deflect any comment made about him. “I just think you’re being a bit unfair about this. It’s just a project.”

"Dramatic?” Abdi pipes in and Carlos gestures his way in agreeance as if Abdi’s single word was everything he was trying to say. Matteo feigns hurt as he swishes his head side to side, fringe beginning to fall into his eyes. Their words sting but he knows they have nothing but the best intentions in mind.

“Are we talking just as dramatic as you were when this girl said she’d sleep with me before you?” Carlos’ face broke out into a wide grin as he accepts the response, the rumble of his cackle vibrating through his chest. Jonas and Abdi make one monotonous “ _ohhh_ ” sound as Carlos attempts to reach forward to punch Matteo, missing purely because of the table in the centre of them stopping him from leaning far enough over.

The room fell back into a comfortable hum as the boys all relaxed, slipping back into a comfortable conversation about their plans for the coming summer and what they should do. Matteo listens in as he gets up to grab another bottle of beer, abandoning his now lukewarm, half-empty one on the living room table. The sound of his friends talking eases his heart but he can’t stop the sinking feeling.

He needs to fix this. Whatever this is.

* * *

 

The days suddenly start to blur together, joined only by the faint red glare of Matteo’s dying alarm clock. It sits on top of his night table, angled slightly away from where he sleeps so he isn’t forced to watch the seconds tick away while he’s alone inside his own head.

He doesn’t go to class. He’s aware that he should have pulled himself out from the jumble of blankets and gone but there’s no energy to do so. He knows he’s back at square one; the hollowness of his own mentality settles deep in his bones and he’s not willing to fight it off.

He stopped taking his medication. He can see the glow of the label beneath his eyelids, the words enticing. _Prozac_. He had been prescribed it just shortly after what his friends dubbed “The Matteo Breakdown”. He doesn’t recall ever hurting himself—or anyone else, for that matter—but the looks they share, whenever he’s silent for too long, tell him differently. The thought leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

It’s the fourth day in bed when his phone rings for the first time and it’s not the song chosen for Jonas. Or Abdi. Or Carlos. It’s just the simple trill for an unknown number.

“Hello?” Matteo’s voice is jagged, the desert-like sensation in his throat lacing his words. The person on the other end stays silent for a few moments before Matteo hears the sharp inhale of slight embarrassment.

“It’s David.” The silence returns as Matteo looks over at the clock and its blaring **08:45 PM** suddenly reminds him of where he’s supposed to be.

“Shit,” he mutters as he drops a hand to his face before pulling himself up into a slouched position. His shoulders ache with the pain of exhaustion and a part of him tells him to just give in—just hang up the phone and roll back over to sleep. But something pulls him away from that; he can’t make David fail over his own problems. “I’m sorry, I fell asleep. I’m on my way.”

“Fauna’s Shoppe, Matteo.” Although Matteo never asks for the name, he’s grateful that David tells him. The words are soft and they make Matteo’s chest relax and the guilt morphs ever so slightly. Just enough to cause Matteo to pull himself out of his bed. He repeats the name of the café before giving David a “see you soon”. He hangs up just before David replies.

He doesn’t bother changing out of his sweats or combing his hair; the copious amounts of energy it takes to pile his textbooks into his backpack is more than he’s willing to give. He abandons his bike in the apartment and decides to walk there instead.

After ten minutes pass, Matteo finally relaxes his shoulders and takes in a deep breath. It stings at first, the sensation like a match combusting inches away from a tank of gasoline. There’s no explosion but the taste it leaves is one laced with fear. He knows the café that David picked; it was on the outskirts of downtown, tucked into the darker edges where no one likes to venture past sun fall. It’s small enough to miss it. Something in Matteo tells him that’s what David likes about it.

When he arrives, the faint scent of freshly baked cookies welcomes him. The purple neon lights strung around the small cafe catches his attention immediately, faintly lighting up photographs and slightly-rusted signs on the wall. He stands with his hand on the doorknob, taking in the place with curious eyes.

He recognizes it, like a hazy dream from a yearned-for childhood; it was one his mother used to work at before everything became too much. He looks over to the counter and a wave of nostalgia hits him. The gentle 80’s music used to be one that she’d dance along to; the cookies used to be ones she’d bring home to Matteo; this was a place that reminded him of before. Before what, he isn’t sure.

His eyes land on David who has his nose buried in a book on the very last barstool of the long table. Matteo moves to slide into the seat next to David and he freezes on the greeting. What does he say when he’s over an hour late and his shoulders hang with exhaustion? What does he say when he’s wearing clothes for the fifth day in a row and doesn’t care enough to be ashamed of it?

“I ordered you a hot chocolate,” David says as he puts down the book and looks over at Matteo. Matteo’s heart aches briefly; if he could personify his own exhaustion, it’d look like David. The gentle smile on his face doesn’t take away the cold and vacant expression dulling his eyes and his slightly too-quiet words doesn’t hide the grip on what Matteo assumes _isn’t_ David’s first cup of coffee. “I hope that’s okay.”

“Thank you.” The girl behind the counter gives David a knowing nod before she begins making the hot chocolate. Matteo watches intently as she pours the kettle into this clear mug before topping it off with whipped cream and small chocolate shavings. She places it down in front of Matteo with a simple flourish of her hand before disappearing into the back of the shoppe. Matteo takes a small sip and is immediately welcomed by the chocolatiest hot chocolate he has ever consumed in his life.

“It’s one of my favourite drinks,” David comments as Matteo sips on it consistently, his slowly-warming hands wrapped around the cup like its his source of a heartbeat. David takes a sip of his own drink before turning to face Matteo, hands curled around the book again. Matteo’s eyes follow the book and he realizes it’s not a book to read; it’s a sketchbook, filled with drawings and scribbles.

“I have an idea for the project.” David opens the book three-quarters of the way through to two pages filled with sketches of photographs and a title that reads “ _Life_ — _Out of Death_.” Matteo runs his index finger along with the page absently, barely listening to what David has to say.

“You’re so talented,” he murmurs just beneath his breath, far too low for David to pick up. The drawings were spectacular; each one brought Matteo to a place he felt at home at despite never seeing the places in the flesh. And they all have something in common; they’re abandoned by society. David’s hand reaches out with a photo in hand, drawing Matteo’s attention away from the journal. David drops the photo as he pulls his journal away from Matteo, still talking.”—and I think it’d be cool. What do you think?”

  
“Why abandoned places? What does that have to do with life?” Matteo furrows his brows together as he picks up the photo in hand; an empty swimming pool with the blurry form of a person in the very corner. He runs his thumb over the person before looking up at David who stares back with a mixed expression that Matteo can’t decipher.

“Matteo, did you listen to _anything_ I said?” The words are slightly edged and it’s clear it’s from his own personal exhaustion and feigned annoyance but Matteo immediately assumes its David’s hatred of him finally peeking through. He shrugs, not trusting his own voice, as he drops the photo back onto the tabletop.

  
“The theme is life.” David opens the notebook again, beginning to sketch something on a blank page. The blurred lines are absently drawn, David concentrating on the reiteration of his words. “And we already know enough about what other people think about life. So I say we bring life into things that everyone views as dead. And we just take a bunch of photos in them and edit them so that you’re the life and it doesn’t matter where you go; you’re still living.”

Matteo furrows his eyebrows for a few moments as he processes David’s words before finally catching onto what he was saying. The project was a photography one and they would be exploring things and David appears to have it all planned out already. Matteo rests his face against his hand, his cheek now smushed. He watches David finish off the scribbles of lines before slamming the notebook shut. It was Matteo’s hot chocolate mug, topped with the prettiest swirl of whipped topping that Matteo has ever seen, drawn or real.

“This world prides itself on being brand new, flaws out of sight and out of mind. These places are all abandoned but they have a story; lives used to be lived in them. And we can live in them again, bring life to it all.” David picks the photo up and he presses his thumb to cover the silhouette of the person. There are a few moments of silence that passes before David sighs quietly, lifting his eyes to meet Matteo’s.

“We can?”

“Have you ever felt like you’re not a person? Like you’re just a skeleton or a body walking through space but you’re not you-you're not living. These places are skeletons and we’re their souls.”

“What if they don’t want their souls back?” The question settles between them and Matteo pulls his stare from David. He turns and faces the front. The whipped cream on top of his hot chocolate has melted away, the steam now gone. He takes a sip and it’s colder than not and the tension between them shifts into unknown territory and Matteo feels suffocated. Suffocated by the silence from David, suffocated by the music.

“Why would a person choose to simply exist?” The question comes a second too late and Matteo doesn’t know how to reply anymore. Why _would_ a person choose that? He picks at the fuzz on the hem of his sweatshirt and lets it slip through his fingertips, floating to the ground. He knows that David can see the thinly veiled depression; who is he, if not the boy who looks too sad to function? The boy who can’t even will himself out of bed for the only thing that brings him joy. The boy that—

“Thank you for coming.” David cuts through Matteo’s thoughts and Matteo’s grateful. The thoughts were spinning towards a dead-end that he couldn’t steer away from but David was there. Is there.

“I’m sorry for not being on time.” He can hear his therapist’s voice in his mind. Don’t apologize for being unwell, Matteo. But thank people for being there. He can hear the pride in her voice as he clears his throat to correct himself. “Thank you for waiting.”

David gives him a soft smile as he slides out of his seat, sliding on his too-large jacket. He picks his bag off the floor and slides it onto his shoulders before placing some coins onto the table and looking up at the employee with the sweetest smile Matteo has ever witnessed. “This is for a chocolate cookie for him.”

Matteo watches as Matteo watches David slip out of the door and disappear into the streets with one final glance. The chocolate cookie gets placed in front of him on a small floral plate, chocolate still gooey from being freshly baked. The first bite is glorious; it melts in his mouth and a soft blanket of childhood innocence wraps around him. As he takes the second bite, he glances over to the door with a soft gaze. The grandfather clock in the corner of the shoppe chimes ten times and Matteo's eyes linger on the closed door, mind brought back to the outing incident.

He hates how just even being in David's presence forces him to confront it.

* * *

 

“I want to get better.” Matteo’s voice shakes against the walls of the room, firm in the face of fear. David’s comment from the day before stuck with him to the point where he called up his therapist again. He thinks of the abandoned rooms that David found life in; he knows he’s just an abandoned body with no life to be found. At least, not his own.

He watches Dr. Gossicar lift the pen from the paper, rests the tip of it against her lips, before dropping it back down. The pen smudges her vibrant red lipstick and Matteo’s eyes follow the pen as she scribbles something onto her notepad before dropping it on the couch beside her. She leans forward to rest her forearms on her thighs as she stares Matteo down, her dark brown eyes fixated on him.

Matteo can pick apart her features and put them back together, eyes closed and away from her. Her soft brown eyes remind him of his own mother; worn yet so filled with love that the gold flecks spiralled around the iris shine like the sunlight. Her thin lips, always painted with bright red lipstick, stretches wide whenever he sees her and his heart always breaks at the thought of how much she loves him. He lifts his head up to look at the spiral of her thick black hair twirled into a bun before he realizes it’s changed. Instead of its usual slicked-back bun, it’s a braid with a single blue streak running through it.

A faint smile settles on his face as he stares at it and she notices, lifting her hand to run her fingers over it. He watches the doctor mode slip off of her face and she settles into being a normal twenty-six-year-old woman; one delighted by the simple things in life.

“My daughter wanted me to match her,” she says with the softest voice Matteo has ever heard her use. His eyes flicker to the photo on the desk behind her before looking back at her, curious yet content. She kept her fingers lingering on her hair before dropping her hands back into her lap, clearing her throat and giving Matteo that smile—the one that tells him that she’s done being a person once again and back to being his doctor. He contemplates telling her how much he appreciates her showing him her human side; it makes him feel less alone and less strange.

He doesn’t.

“Can we bring up the topic from two weeks ago?” She asks as she looks down at her clipboard, her eyes following notes on a previous page. Matteo’s heart sinks. He shakes his head as he sinks into the couch, arms tightening around himself. She gives him a reassuring smile before nodding, clicking the pen three times. “Okay, tell me about your past two weeks. Something fun must have happened.”

“I couldn’t get out of bed yesterday.” The admission, although thick and heavy slips out and his shoulders relax. She stares at him, waiting for him to elaborate. He bites the tip of his tongue before carrying on, his words cold. “I woke up and couldn’t go to class. It was Comp. Programming and I wanted to ask Ms. Tarygaren a question.” She knows it’s his favourite class and the grimace that flashes across her face makes his heart sink even more.

“Have you been taking your medication?” Matteo settles a gaze on her hands, staring at the chipped pink polish on her nails. It covers the skin around her nails and he wonders why they’re so poorly done. His eyes lift back up to the photo then back to her nails and then it all sits: her daughter. She clears her throat to bring him back to her and he abides, focusing back on her.

“I haven’t for the past week.”

“Is there a reason why? Are you okay?” He shrugs and slumps back into his seat, even more, body mirroring that of a young child who got scolded. He feels the same way. Her gaze shifts from concerned to sympathetic to worried before she replies, her voice far gentler than Matteo feels he deserves. “Matteo, you need to take them. If they’re not right for you, they’re not right for you. But you need to communicate that. And stopping medication like that suddenly can be very dangerous. ”

“Communicate,” he whispers to himself. He straightens his posture before slumping forward, shoulders curling inwards as he stared directly at her hands once again. “I stopped taking them because they were working. And I've slowly lowered my dosage over the past three weeks. I thought I was fine.” He expects her to be confused but she isn’t; the expression on her face tells him that she knows exactly what he’s talking about. He picks at the string on his pants from a few days ago and frowns, his mind suddenly taking him somewhere else.

“I need help with something.” He tugs his lower lip between his teeth for a second and he pauses, processing the words he just said. He leans forward to pick up a small plush off the table between them, squeezing it gently. It was a small tiger plush that Dr. Gossicar said she won at an amusement park and over the course of the past six months, it had grown to be Matteo’s favourite comfort out of the entire office.

Dr. Gossicar stays silent to encourage Matteo to continue. He tightens his grip around the tiger, blunt nails digging into the soft fur. He wonders if, despite how bitten down his nails are, they could tear away at the fur. He could pull it apart and let the soft fluff fall to the floor, ruined by his own hands.

He tends to ruin things.

“I did something bad in high school and it’s coming back. “ He pulls at the tiger’s tail before letting it lax. His breathing is tight once again as he struggles to let the words slip through, afraid of demonizing himself. What if this tarnished her opinion of him? “I had a friend and we were both closeted and I outed them to protect myself.”

“Did they know you were gay, too?” Matteo nods, the lump in his throat overtaking for a moment. He visibly gulps and shies away from her, eyes falling to focus on the tiger’s. They’re far too big for its face, the pupils swallowing him whole. A thin ring of sparkling baby blue outlines the pupils and Matteo swirls along with them, feeling like he’s being watched. “Well, tell me more about what happened.”

He brings himself back to the moment, it all far too clear for a memory from three years ago. He can hear the laughter of the other students’ as they stand around him and his friend, eagerly hanging onto their every word. He can feel the sinking shame in his stomach as acid drips from his tongue, so out of character for him. He can hear her say his name again, filled with pain and hurt.

“She told me who she was in love with when we were drunk and I wanted to come out to someone but I didn’t know what they thought so I said her instead. I told them who she was in love with and it spread around the school.” He puts the tiger back down on the table and pulls his arms back to his chest, hands slumped in his lap as he leans back. His eyes catch the thread on his pants once again and he tugs it as he continues. “When she needed me to help, I left her.”

“You never leave people, Matteo.” The guilt in his stomach overtakes his heart and if he looks her in the eyes, he knows it’ll swallow him whole and he’ll suffocate beneath the pressure. He nods in agreeance, knowing what she’s trying to say.

_You must have been scared._

Fear causes him to shift into someone he’s not and spew acid that is not his own. Fear causes him to pull away from his sense of identity to morph; to lose himself in the face of reality. And fear has ruined many, many things for him.

“I said so many mean things to her. I told her that she was only a lesbian because she wasn’t hot and I—” The words create a flood in his lungs and he can’t fight it off; the fear finally swallows him whole. His body trembles against the leather of the couch and he can’t pull his eyes away from the tiger’s.

“Did you ever apologize to her?”

“I haven’t seen her since. We were in the middle of school and she yelled at me to admit it and I said— I said that I wouldn’t be friends with a—” The word dies on his tongue because he can’t bring himself to say it. He said he wouldn’t be friends with a girl like _that_.

Matteo shudders in his own skin as he lifts his eyes to meet Dr. Gossicar’s, afraid of what they would say. But they say nothing and instead, give him nothing but understanding.

“What do you think you should do?”

The question hangs between them for a few moments, weighing on Matteo’s shoulders. He doesn’t know; the years had come and gone since that moment but he doesn’t have any right to be forgiven. He had taken the one thing that his friend wanted to keep to herself and spilled it out for the entire school to see just to protect himself.

All he wanted was to protect himself.

“While you think about it,” Dr. Gossicar says, clearing her throat. “Let’s talk about something new.” She taps her pen against her clipboard three times as she waits for Matteo to agree. He’s grateful that she knows when too much is too much and pulls away. Even when he thinks it’s too much, she knows the exact limit.

“You mean my dad.”

Dr. Gossicar nods and Matteo sighs. The past two weeks worth of emotional repression is bubbling at the surface and it’s all threatening to spill over, flooding the office until they’re both drowning in nothing but Matteo’s pain. He hates that he’s so broken; he’s so broken and there’s no use putting something together when it’ll just break again.

“Do you miss him?”

The admission would hurt more than missing him does, Matteo knows that. His heart sinks into the pit of his stomach and he hopes the acid burns it away so he doesn’t have to feel it anymore. His finger tugs on the string once again before it snaps beneath his pull, now wrapped around his finger. The fidgeting stills for a single moment as he takes it all in; his feelings, her words, just everything. He shakes his head and Dr. Gossicar chuckles sadly.

“Matteo, you came back.” He tugs on the cracking skin of his lower lip as her voice wraps around him, securing him in a sense of warmth he didn’t know he needed. His name sounds so comforting when she says it; a gentle tug on his sleeve to pull him back to reality. “I pushed the last session to see how far you were willing to go and you came back. That tells me that you want to get better and you _have_ been.”

Confusion settles on his face after a few minutes, the words sinking in. They sink deep. “But I stopped taking them.”

Dr. Gossicar sighs. The blue streak in her hair glows beneath the light for just a moment and Matteo stares up at it to hopefully disappear in the blue. She leans forward and rests her hands on her thighs, her voice dropping to just barely above a whisper.

“Recovery is not an easy road, Matteo. We, as a society, view recovery as if it’s this straight line but that’s not the case. We fall back into our old routines very quickly because despite how much they hurt us, it’s comfortable. We’re safe there. When you stop /taking your meds, that’s you going back to what you know in here.” She taps her index finger against her temple before letting her hand fall back to her lap.

“But it’s what’s in here—” She moves to touch her heart. “—that matters.”

“I’m scared.” He doesn’t mean to tell her; he didn’t even realize that fear was what he was currently feeling. He draws in an elongated breath before shrugging, trying to brush it off. The pressure of his emotions spilling out after being stifled for two weeks threatens to crack him and he’s not sure if he can do that. He can’t handle tending to infected scars, especially not ones he knew about.

The scratching of Dr. Gossicar’s pen echoes against his eardrums and his chest hollows out for a moment as he stares back down at the tiger. Half of him wants to run before she can pull away the stitches of his personality apart but the other half knows he needs this. He needs the comforting serenity of safety after years of being afraid of his own shadow. He feels the room shift as Dr. Gossicar does her usual routine of attempting to pull him back together before he leaves the room, back into reality. His eyes follow the small ring of blue around the tiger’s own and prays internally for some peace.

There’s no answer.

* * *

The day after the therapy appointment, Matteo wakes up to the trilling of his alarm. It reads 09:00 A.M. and for the first time in weeks, he pulls himself out of bed before he can slip away into the sheets again. He hums quietly to himself as he makes himself breakfast--a piece of toast with extra butter and jam--and finishes it in one sitting. He then showers and changes into fresh clothes and the faint scent of the laundry soap on his clothes makes him feel lighter. 

He likes days like these; where the weight on his shoulder is bearable and he can do things. He can be things. The smile that Jonas had given him on the way out was one that Matteo liked to keep locked in his memory. It was a smile that made him feel important and loved.

The trek to his university, on the other hand, was bitter and dreary. Storm clouds hung above the city, lingering for the perfect moment. The wind nipped at his cheeks and his nose turned a bright red. That didn’t matter. Matteo did it; he pulled himself out of his bed and went to his Computer Programming teacher. Willingly.

“Great to see you, Matteo.” The voice welcomes him from behind a computer screen, frizzy red curls barely visible at the top of the screen. Matteo sniffles and runs his hand across his now-burning nose as he walks closer to the teacher. Ms. Tarygaren. 

“I’m sorry for not being here last class. I had some personal problems—“

“It’s okay.” Ms. Tarygaren sits up properly and she’s finally in Matteo’s full view. She flicked her wrist as if smacking Matteo’s words away before she could hear them. She knew. She was the one who recommended therapy to Matteo; the one who helped him gain a stable footing. “We missed your insights, though. With that aside, how are you today?”

“Good.” The smile he gives, although weak, is genuine. His shoulders straighten and he repeats the word again, firmer and prouder. She beams at him, folding her hands on her desk. The smile reaches up to her eyes and her cheeks lift her glasses up slightly before her facial expression drops back into a softened smile.

“Good! I’m glad to hear that. Now, is there anything I can do for you? I’d love to talk but you know how the final weeks of semesters are.” She flicks her head towards the computer screen and he chuckles forcefully, knowing he’s one of the students that she was referencing. He’d have to take a look through his notes and make sure that everything was handed in or at least, enough to consider it passable.

“Yeah. Uh, about the final project. I know that it’s supposed to be us designing our own website but I was wondering if I could do something else. I’ve already designed multiple websites before.”

“What do you have in mind?” Her attention is completely pulled away from the screen and she places her pen down against her notebook, pushing her glasses up the brim of her nose. 

“A small video game. Nothing too major, something simple like Temple Run. I understand the basics of game programming and I have the rough outline of a game from back in high school but I think it’d be cool to finish.” The idea had come to him on the walk home from the cafe after meeting David; he wanted to do something that would be challenging and something that would make him feel proud of himself. A motivator to get out of bed. 

“You know that’s what those completing their minor in Game Design do, correct?” Her tone is wary. 

“Yes, ma’am.” Ms. Tarygaren looks over at her computer screen for a few moments before turning back to Matteo, a look of determination on her face. She crosses one leg over the other and folds her hands in her lap, the friendliness dissipating away just to be replaced with the authority figure. 

“I’ll make you a deal. You complete this game this year and I’ll not only use it for your final this year but I’ll let you use it as a framework for next year. On one condition.”

“Anything.”

“You declare your major in either Computer Programming or Game Design.”

He doesn’t know what to say. Although he knows that the realm of computer programming is something he enjoys, something about committing to it makes him want to flee. He doesn’t have to reply to her words for her to understand exactly why he hasn’t done so yet. She once said that she saw herself in him and that’s why she was so adamant on keeping him afloat.

“Matteo, you’re one of my best students. And I can say confidently that you’re not just one of the best now but of all the students I’ve had in my fifteen years of teaching. You have so much potential and you need to embrace it.”

The compliment makes Matteo’s heart skip a beat before swelling so large, it could shatter. The smile he gives her now is not weakened by his heavy shoulders by rather, lifted by her comments. For a fleeting second, he feels as if he can conquer the world. However, reality hits him far too quick and he’s left with the fact that he has to declare a major for this project. What if it turns out that it’s something he enjoys as a hobby and not something he wants to spend the rest of his life doing?

“Sound like a deal?”

He nods, his words failing him. His stomach churns and he nods again, a forced “okay” slipping out just beneath his breath. Ms. Tarygaren stares at him for a few moments with a tilted head before sighing, shaking her head as if she was erasing the past couple of minutes. She flicks her wrist again, whishing away the words from the air. 

“Fine, you can do the project. But please at least consider it. You’d make an amazing programmer and the field would be lucky to have you.” She reaches forward and places a hand on his forearm before letting it drop and clearing her throat. Ms. Tarygaren moves her chair back to face the computer screen and begins furious typing away, glancing down at her notes every now and then. Matteo knows her well enough to know that it was her way of ending the conversation. He slips out of the room just as quickly as he slipped in, quiet as ever. 

As he stands in the empty hall, an uneasy feeling settles back into his chest and he isn’t so sure that today is as good as he hoped it’d be. 

* * *

Jonas had dragged Matteo out of their apartment at the confession that he had stopped taking his medication. Once Matteo had gotten home from talking with Ms. Tarygaren, Jonas had placed the pill bottle back down in front of Matteo with a raised eyebrow, not daring to speak in case Matteo would shut down. Matteo knew it was coming. The pill bottle sat like a declaration of Matteo’s problems behind the mirror in their bathroom. He’d laugh at the symbolism of hiding his pills behind a wall if it didn’t hurt with its accuracy.

“I stopped taking them.” The words felt less pliant the second time around; Matteo could hear the pills clatter around in the bottle, mocking him. Pulling him away from his comfort. Pulling him away from his identity.

“Why?” The question was not malicious or mocking. It was the tone of a concerned boy who doesn’t know how to help his best friend. He shouldn’t know. He shouldn’t have to. He shouldn’t have to help Matteo. Poor Matteo with his stupid, stupid problems and his stupid, stupid—

Now, they were sitting in the cafeteria with their friends. Jonas gave Matteo his pen the moment they arrived, a simple grounding technique that annoyed the others but meant the world to Matteo. The pen makes a soft flattering noise against the edge of the table every time Matteo flicks it, a sound he has grown comfortable with. He tries to distort it; angling the pen in specific ways to change the way it sounds. It doesn’t change and Matteo isn’t disappointed.

“Luigi!” The hand that settles in his hair gigs on it gently and he emits a soft Ow! as he looks over to the rest of them. They’re all waiting for an answer to a question—a question he didn’t hear.

“What do you think? Should Sam go to the party with me or Abdi?” Carlos asks. Matteo lifts a hand and points in a direction away from either one of the boys.

“Amira.” The smile the glows on her face is enough of a tell that she wishes that Matteo’s supposedly joking words were more than a joke. He’s not joking. Sam turns to face Matteo, her pink ringlets framing her shocked face before she smiles.

“You just want everything to be gay,” Abdi replies, his words loud and Matteo can’t help but to quietly laugh along with his friends. His chest eases with the feeling and the hand in his hair pulls away and he can see the pride in Jonas’ smile, despite not looking at him.

“If you two were my options, I’d be straight.” The pained expression that flashes onto Abdi’s face makes Matteo cackle louder than the rest of them, a sound so rare it often silences those around him.

The conversation eventually pulls away from Matteo and they all break apart, individual conversations littering about as they ate their lunch. Matteo stares down at an empty space in front of his seat. He’s not hungry; the flu-symptoms that appear the first week of being medicated now returning. The timer on Jonas’ phone burns a hole through Jonas’ pocket and burns against Matteo’s chair. The reminder for Matteo to take his medication. His face twists into a scowl before he relaxes, heart heavy with guilt. It’s an emotion he knows better than he knows his own name. The good mood from this morning was suddenly gone, replaced by this unspeakable bitterness. He can’t trace it back to a reason; it slowly ate away at him during his walk home and now it was consuming him.

‘ _Jonas just cares about you,_ ’ he reminds himself. He glances over his table of friends slowly, taking in their gleeful faces and melodic laughter. ‘ _They all do.’_

He drops his gaze back down to the table and begins tapping the pen furiously. The stress of final projects and exams finally begins to hit him and he hates the way it looms. Envy fills his bones st how his friends look so relaxed. He knows it’s because when the time comes, they’ll be studying and he’ll be forgetting. However he can manage, he always makes himself forget stress.

The thought of final exam season brings forth the thought of his mother. She’s always more considerate and asks him to come over more often. He never takes up her offers. He picks up his phone and opens their messages; three messages left not answered to by Matteo. One message about his father. 

_‘Your father would like to make amends, my dear son. We are planning to go out for dinner and I’d love for you to attend. Love, Mum.'_

If guilt is the emotion Matteo knows best, anger is its right-hand man. Even the words ‘your father’ on his screen causes Matteo’s jaw to clench and he turns off his phone entirely, not bothering to read the message that pops up just before it shuts down. He runs his hands over his face, resting the tip of his middle finger in the corners of his eyes, causing stars to swirl in the darkness. He then drops his hands back to the table, picking up the pen and resuming the tapping rhythm.

“Are you busy?” The question drags Matteo out of a trance by his collar, snapping him back into reality. Matteo drops the pen that he was tapping against the surface of the table before looking around the table at his friends. Jonas stares at him with a look that tells Matteo he knows more than Matteo does, Sara with a quirk of her eyebrows, and the rest with a slight confusion that Matteo doesn’t understand. He sinks beneath their trying gazes before shrugging nonchalantly. David stands there, just slightly off to the side so everyone can see him, with his hands in his jeans and his hair a little too ruffled.

“Why?” He leans back in his seat and stretches head over the back of the hair, staring at David through half-lidded eyes. David shifts from one foot to the other, eyes following the table beside him before settling back on Matteo’s. He tilts his head, so slightly it could have been missed, before speaking again.

“Our project. We need to work on it again.”

“I thought you would text me about it.” Matteo straightens himself in the chair and he stares at David, waiting for an answer. Although the distance doesn’t give him the same chance to pick apart David’s eyes the same way as he did at the cafeteria. The longer David’s gaze remains on him, the more and more Matteo can remember every inch of them. He feels trapped beneath the gaze and for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel like running away from it.

“Yeah.” Matteo can feel the tension wash off David in waves—crashing against Matteo’s chest until they’re both drowning. Matteo tilts his head in a similar way that David does and if it wasn’t for the fixated gaze on David’s features, Matteo would have missed the ghost of a smile that flickered for a brief second. “Anyway, can you meet me here tomorrow?”

Matteo nods, a soft “yeah” slipping out of his mouth before a soft blush works its way into his cheeks. He thanks the school for its poor lighting; he looks warm beneath it, allowing it to disguise his blush easier. David gives him a chirp nod as he tightens his grip on the straps of his backpack, bouncing from one foot to another. He glances over Matteo and his friends once again before exiting with a “goodbye” softer than Matteo’s.

Jonas turns to Matteo with the same looking from before, just heightened. “Are you sure he hates you?”

Matteo watches as David slips through the bodies in the cafeteria, head slightly ducked as he slips on his headphones. He wonders if David’s thoughts are clouded by the soft melody of the music through his headphones or if they’re sharp enough to echo against the headphones, distorting the sound. He wishes he knew what David was thinking; only then would he have the peace of a slowed heartbeat.

* * *

The exhaustion sits on Matteo’s shoulders as he sits hunched over his laptop, eyes narrowed from the glaring backlight. The red 03:22 AM from his alarm clock resting on his night-table reminds him of the fact that he’s been up for well over twenty-four hours, working on his project. He straightens his back momentarily, stretching his limbs out before sinking back into his comfortable place, eyes focusing back on the screen. After he had gotten home from the hangout, he immediately went to his room and began working on his project. That was six hours ago.

He doesn’t have much; the outline of the character sits on the screen, centred on a blank white screen and he can’t keep his mind on the game. All of his ideas are spread out on the floor in front of him, papers crumpled and uncrumpled, barely legible scribbles covered pages of printer paper stolen from the library. Half a case of beer surrounds him, empty, as time slips away. The character remains the same as it was four hours ago, black hair dropping into his face and faint veins peeking out from his thin lips.

He picks up a piece of paper that has a small stick figure on it, a poorly drawn cape and top hat pencil-drawn over the black-inked figure. He runs his tongue over his chapped lips as he looks at the notes beside it.

‘ _Black, thick hair. Soft brown eyes. Vampire teeth. A black cape that’s too big. When he talks, it’s quiet that if you don’t squint your ears you can’t hear. But deep too.'_

 His eyes scan over the notes over and over again until he drops it back to the ground, lifting his hands to run over his face, exasperated. Exhaustion tugs on his body but he can’t will himself to crawl into bed. The sweet slumber of sleep is something that he can’t willingly give to himself. Not yet. He convinces himself that he deserves this—the pain of heavy eyes and shoulders that have to be slumped against something to support themselves. His eyes skirt over to his phone and suddenly, the person on his screen is abandoned.

Everything finally seems to all fall into place after days of consistent pondering and pre-breakdown sessions. He pushes his laptop off his lap and he picks up his phone and opens the ‘Instagram’ app with the intent of finding one person.

Leonie Richter.

He scrolls through her Instagram page and suddenly, everything comes back to him once again. He thinks of the way her eyes welled up with tears and they slipped down flushed cheeks; the way her voice trembled as she stumbled over Matteo’s name and the way it pierced his heart like a fragment of sharpened glass.

He opens her story to see a small child with the widest grin on her face. She was swinging on a child swing and he can hear Leonie calling out to her, giggles laced through the clouds in the sky. He hears her call out to the child, followed by “who’s my favourite little girl?” and the child’s giggle rises.

He quickly hovers over the message button before sending a quick “Hey”. He stares down at the screen, wondering what her reply was going to be. Suddenly, panic settles in. He can’t just reach out to a girl he hasn’t spoken to in five years with a ‘ _hey_ ’. Especially not one he hurt to the levels that he did.

He drops his phone down beside him for a few moments as he runs his hands over his face before burying them in his hair and balling his fists slightly. Tears of exhaustion threaten to well up in his eyes and he just simply blinks rapidly, pushing his hands back into his face as he attempted to sort out his thoughts. They all screamed at him, twisting words into spears of acid, splintering themselves between the fractures of his self-esteem.

With a split of a second passed, Matteo picks up his phone once again to send another message before throwing his phone away from him. Away before the guilt can settle back into his chest and swallow him whole.

  
SEND TO:  
_leonie.rchtr_  
Can we meet up?

 


End file.
